Knowing how to characterize your novel
I read a lot of YA and I still have trouble classifying my book as YA. It fits all the characteristics listed in the first, "sticky" post on this thread -- but it doesn't hit the YA market well because it's not dystopia but straight fantasy which is just not popular with agents right now.
I don't think it's a failure of the book itself (though maybe it is), because before I took a (very long) break from marketing it to have kids, and before a rewrite improved it immeasurably, I was getting requests from agents to read the full manuscript and getting positive responses (though it needed that rewrite to be sellable re: the positive agents).
So now I spend a lot of time dithering and changing the ages of the characters (and changing them back) as I try to see the book as YA or not YA. Then I start doing it with my other book...wish we didn't have all these categories!
I read a lot of YA and I still have trouble classifying my book as YA. It fits all the characteristics listed in the first, "sticky" post on this thread -- but it doesn't hit the YA market well because it's not dystopia but straight fantasy which is just not popular with agents right now.
I don't think it's a failure of the book itself (though maybe it is), because before I took a (very long) break from marketing it to have kids, and before a rewrite improved it immeasurably, I was getting requests from agents to read the full manuscript and getting positive responses (though it needed that rewrite to be sellable re: the positive agents).
So now I spend a lot of time dithering and changing the ages of the characters (and changing them back) as I try to see the book as YA or not YA. Then I start doing it with my other book...wish we didn't have all these categories!